


They’ll Wear Us Glittering

by TheCokeworthCauldrons



Series: Harry and the Hedgerots [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexuality, Civil Disobedience, Coming Out, Culture Shock, Dysfunctional Family, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Experimental Magic, F/F, F/M, Family Drama, Family Feels, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Kid Fic, Love Triangles, M/M, Queer Themes, Secrets Revealed, Severus Snape Lives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:42:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23599300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCokeworthCauldrons/pseuds/TheCokeworthCauldrons
Summary: Takes place after the events in What We Own:Severus attempts to rebuild Spinner’s End, loathe to accept Remus Lupin’s help but without any other option. The wards he created to protect his new family prove too unpredictable, however, leaving the house on its last legs. Similarly, their effect on his sister might be deadly if gone unchecked.Desperate, he turns down avenues too new, dark and wondrous, even for a man of his experience, finding new feelings along the way.Meanwhile, for Harry, the extra time with his family brings certain secrets to light. He vows to guide them through the magical world they lost. Unbeknownst to him, with a family magic never before witnessed, they’ll change the world he knew forever—if for the better remains to be seen.
Relationships: Harry Potter & Original Character(s), Harry Potter & Severus Snape, Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Kingsley Shacklebolt/Original Female Character(s), Narcissa Black Malfoy/Severus Snape, Past Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy, Remus Lupin/Severus Snape, Severus Snape & Original Character(s)
Series: Harry and the Hedgerots [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1495325
Comments: 14
Kudos: 17





	They’ll Wear Us Glittering

August drizzled into September over a week of overcast skies and a leeching damp that ached for rain. They drove into Cokeworth expecting the house repaired only to be soundly disappointed. More than rebuilt, it leaned like an old man in a stiff wind, bones and all creaking. 

One could still feel summer there. Warm forest sighs lilting with cicadas’ calls buffeted the blue tarp tacked over the house’s open facade, and haphazardly buttoned as it was, the tarp flew up, flapping in a sudden gust. The godwind ward rushed to greet them stood gaping on the sidewalk, and in its frenzy, it flashed Spinner’s End’s naked bookshelves and curse-pocked living room floor, blue hem flying.

Snape stalked around to the front yard, managing an armload of ornately bound books—borrowed from the Malfoys, probably, telling from their rich, dark leather and molded spines. He didn’t even look up from the splayed pages of the topmost tome, three more orbiting his bent head. He’d yanked his hair back, which showed his sleepless black and black-ringed eyes bearing down on the cursive text.

Lips twitching while he read, squinting ferociously, he flapped a hand their way like shooing flies.

“Go back,” he said.

“What’re you on?,” replied Freddy, his smile dropping. Snape finally snapped his head from his book to scowl impatiently at them, making the larger man unfurl to his full height. He lobbied back the same Snapely scowl.

“We just got here, Rev. What’re you playin’ at?”

“Hmph, I could’ve told you not to waste the gas. There’s no time for you now. Leave.”

Grace stepped between the two men, arms held out for peace although she struggled to look away from the ruin. By whatever means, Spinner’s End looked worse than how they’d left it. Still, she cleared her throat to speak, only for Snape to pivot on his heel and march inside, dismissing them. 

“Excu—oi!” 

She chased after the wizard, front door left ajar as they marched inside. Raised voices spilled out onto the street until the two eldest rushed in next. Harry made to follow, but Freddy explicitly trusted him with Laney and the car, nodding at both with face grim before hustling after Zed. And so Harry stayed outside for over half an hour, fielding questions from his little sister until they both fell nervously silent. 

Distant yelling, the snapping tarp; Snape’s cat purring in the backseat; and the car axles squeaking, since Harry kept hopping out to pace. Freddy came out once to give them lunch and hurried back inside. Harry never felt younger than in wordlessly eating a ham sandwich while the others argued.

When the Hedgerots finally resurfaced, Snape wasn’t with them. Freddy thanked Harry, thumping his back gratefully, knocking him double and winding him. Then he ushered Harry back into the car, sighing an apology, scratching his beard while bent over to rest his forearms in the backseat window, humming like he didn’t know what to say.

For a moment, they all watched mother and daughter light cigarettes on the porch, following smoke as it hazed the orange porch lights shining on Grace and Zed’s heads, down-turned as they muttered between themselves. Then Freddy calmly explained that there had been a change of plans.

Harry wanted to argue, but sat chewing his tongue, thinking the other man looked drained by the news as he relayed it. He bit off bits to chew and offer, soft and wet as gutter mud that dreary afternoon: “a bit later,” and “a little more left.”

Harry nodded along, feeling helpless. He offered his house as long as they needed it, and Freddy, chewing a cheek, nodded back, hardly hearing him. Once two cigarettes were finished, butts ground under sneaker treads on the stoop, they drove the couple hours back, silent save the radio. 

* * *

Grace took another week off work to look after Laney, who was still off from school. Freddy drove Zed hours to Manchester to make her check-ins with her parole officer. Then again, to make a doctor’s appointment, and one more time for another check-in. Not knowing how long they’d be in London, Harry learned that _technically_ her living with him without permission could warrant a re-arrest. 

The stress of that tidbit seemed to help their rapport. 

“I promise I get it,” he grimaced into his tepid tea when he heard, calling back to his trial at fifteen, the Snatchers and their manhunt, and his time as the nation’s leading Undesirable. “‘Arrest bad.’ I’m pretty sure I follow.”

So he roused her on those mornings, calling up to her from the foyer and not her bedside, lest he earn a pillow to the face. After calling, he’d hear her trip and bang about as she leapt out of bed from fitful sleep—he heard her toss and turn from down the hall almost every night—and he stepped back as she blazed a trail down the stairs.

She always went too fast, stumbled half-asleep to the front door, tripped on her knotted sneaker laces and failed to catch herself, hitting the floor. He gave up trying to help her to her feet since, like Snape, she’d just snap at him and storm out, hollering for Harry to toss this and that at her as she left.

Jackets were thrown onto narrowing shoulders, a wallet shoved into a pocket, important looking papers crushed in her fist. The door slammed behind her as she ran to the car. Then she and Freddy would stay gone until the evening. 

This meant they missed Snape’s unannounced visit midway through the weeks, which the surly wizard pretended not to notice. He’d arrive at random, restock his beaten-up rucksack from the pantry, and then dally in the parlor ignored if Grace wasn’t there to ask where he went.

Why, just that past Tuesday:

“I’ll need Zinnia available for testing Wolfsbane.”

Harry yelped, startled by the man appearing from thin air. Snape loomed over the kitchen table, arms crossed, expression sour. His brows arched expectantly, an unvoiced and painfully clear, “Well?”

Harry let the Quidditch magazine he’d been flipping through slide from his clamming hands to the tabletop, figuring he might like them free, never sure of Snape’s intentions under his roof.

“That’s of course if she can spare a moment in her busy schedule for such a lowly pursuit as life-saving treatment,” Snape continued, curling a thin, cracked lip. 

He was back to looking sickly when, for a while at least, he seemed to be getting some sleep. Now Snape swayed queasily in his boots so heavy, the Blacks’ fine china tinkled in their cabinets when he tapped an irritated foot.

“I’ll...make sure to pass that along?,” Harry offered, baffled and even managing a measure of concern. Worry came to him—sometimes—if the older man looked bad enough.

Snape snipped, “You had better!,” and scowled darker to press his point before Disapparating with a crack, leaving behind a peevish flurry of dust in the daylight. 

He returned again. Once, Harry heard the Floo roar from his room and even got up, bothering to greet him this time. He wasn’t opposed to playing host if missing Zed meant that much to Snape. It was almost nice. But he arrived only to see Snape glance around the vacant parlor and stoop right back into the fireplace, whooshing away, spraying green embers to squat burning through the rug.

* * *

Severus crouched in his overgrown backyard, both hands shuttering his face. His untucked shirt tails dangled almost to the ground, which reached up its tender shoots of grass to tickle his toes curling over his sandals. He buried his aching hands into his hair. He suffered the comfortable summer breeze quietly as a grave. 

His house was sinking.

Loose from its tie, bluntly cut, his hair fell only to his shoulders now as he raked through it. His knuckles creaked in time with the elderly wood that once made up his living room. Those floorboards now succumbed to the soft ground so vibrant and tingling with wards that his soles buzzed with magic. 

“We could try again? Run stronger enchantments under the foundation to push it up.” 

He peeled his eyes open to glare at Lupin through his fingers. Honestly, he forgot most days that the werewolf volunteered his services. Once Severus started fighting with the wards, the other man disappeared inside for hours. 

Lupin reappeared now with shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, watching Severus instead of the house. He held a perspiring glass of water from his kitchen, which couldn’t be but so clean with the plaster and paint chips coating everything indoors. And he drank from it, easy as summer sun, throat working like it was parched. 

_From what? I’ve done all the work!_ Severus bounced his wand tip off his temple. Irritation spread oily and crude over his abject disappointment at seeing grass suck Spinner’s End underground.

As he thought it, the ground shuddered. The windows rattled their loose panes and three floors gave a mighty groan. Another quarter inch of brick sunk into the dirt. Severus heard Lupin swallow another mouthful of water and couldn’t help the violent twitch come over him. 

“My, don’t you look the very picture of leisure,” he replied snidely. 

The response: a hearty _gulp!_

The glass sailed from the other man’s slacking grip and rolled across the lawn. A trail of freshly watered grass sparkled its thanks inside its wake. All but a sip of hard tap water drained back into the soil for Severus to scoff at. 

_Still thirsty?,_ he thought at Lupin’s back. The other man walked away without comment in that waiting way he did. Even with his back turned, Severus could feel the bland smile flatten that habitually doleful face. 

Rolling his shoulders, he fetched the glass with his careful, shifting walk. The werewolf picked his way too naturally across Severus’s yard, sidestepping a soft spot, a patch of shaggy clovers hungry for anything up to the ankle. He knew it too well to have only been there a few hours a day for a fortnight. 

Severus saw him lift the cup pinched between two fingers, the whole hand clung to by hay. Lupin swished a last dreg floating with pollen and dirt, upturned it for the land to drink, and headed back indoors.

“Oh, on break, are we then, Lupin?,” Severus called after him, rocking back on his heels. “Done with your afternoon constitutional? Don’t mind my home becoming a sinkhole apropos of nothing. Do help yourself to a drink, maybe a tonic!”

“Alright, Snape. I hear you,” finally came the terse reply. It beat through the thinning outer walls louder than it would a week ago. He didn’t even have to squint at the siding to know it grew more porous by the day. 

“Can you, through that thick skull? I doubt it.” At least he knew Lupin heard him yelling, what with his walls thinning to newspapers and prayers.

“I said what I meant.” 

Dishes clinked too clearly when hitting the sink. He even heard the sink thrum and the tap sputter as it spat hard water. It made him sick. There might’ve been no wall between them at all!

If he closed his eyes, Severus could be standing in the kitchen berating Lupin over the man’s own shoulder. He couldn’t fathom how his house could stay upright for much longer. It wasn’t only sinking, but withering away.

Lupin sauntered back outside, this time only carrying his wand. 

“Obviously I can’t be as upset as you are that your wards are acting unpredictably.”

“Th—‘unpredictably!?,’” Severus sputtered. He pulled at his hair, hollering: “They’re _eating my damn house!_ ” 

Lupin simply hummed. “My condolences.”

Shouting, Severus hauled back and kicked the wall, and forgetting the yard had long since eaten his boots, stumbled back swearing when he jammed his unsuspecting, unprotected toes. The wall, already cracked from relentless stress, split clear up to the gutter. Resisting a magic undertow weakened it truly to its breaking point. 

Leaf litter rained skittering off the roof and dusted over him, blinded him, shedding stems and pollen directly into his eyes. Betrayed, Severus fell to his knees and tore at the shiny new grass, maddened with rage.

“I created you and you do _this_ to me!? How dare you!” 

“Gods, man, have you lost your mind?” 

He ignored Lupin and ripped until his tired arms begged him to give up the frenzy. Then he ripped even more. Standing, he kicked clumps out of the ground with his uninjured foot, spraying scraggly roots and rich dirt, only to sink down to his knees again when the wards chimed and the house rumbled and the hot swamp washed over them both. 

The invisible serpent squeezed around the outer walls house, making them wheeze. Debris coughed from the slate, out puffing more dust and cobwebs and crispy flies and moldy stink. Severus looked on as Spinner’s End sagged, released to trembling on its rotten beams—his parent’s already ailing house, dealt too many blows too quickly. 

Grace and her brood would pull up to the curb soon and find his sorry self wasting air, a pile of toothpicks at his feet. He hoped the wards wouldn’t gobble up what remained of their belongings purportedly safe within their boundary, but he couldn’t know. 

Was the house lost entirely? Would Severus have to tell them to stay with Potter while he learned to tell magic from monkey shit? 

Winded, he wedged his hand into the fault where structure met sucking dirt. He worked the end of his wand in along his fingers. Sweat dripped off the tip of his nose in the sudden onset mugginess as the world snake ward pushed back, disgruntled by his poking yet again. He felt its agitated ripple over his knuckles and even the impression of scales scraping his callouses. Severus ignored it, knowing the ward wouldn’t hurt him, and began chanting.

 _Up, damn you!,_ he urged his home. 

“It—okay,” Lupin sighed. The werewolf kneeled with a curse, every joint popping. A minute passed and the wards bucked, telling him Lupin had joined him in the dirt. 

Surely enough, the werewolf’s voice rose to meet his, enchanting from half a line behind and then, when Severus coughed to clear his throat, joining him in reluctant harmony. 

The serpent’s side rose and fell as the ward kept coiling tighter, bothered but undeterred. His house groaned again and dragged against his wand as it sunk another eight of an inch into the earth. Still, the two wizards focused on reaching willful magic through the earth to push up the foundation. 

_Come on. Budge!_

But it was no use. They both gave up after nearly an hour, a break to catch their breath, and another hour of halfhearted chanting as they acknowledged defeat. Severus’s home not only failed to rise, but sank even faster now. The perpetual summer day progressed well into its afternoon and saw his house a full inch lower than it’d been that morning.

Lupin excused himself to size the damage up from the street and returned shaking his head, angled his hand and mouthed, “It’s tilting.”

At least he didn’t feign pity when he did it. Severus found himself appreciating the matter-of-fact delivery, although that he took any small comfort from Lupin inspired a violent shiver in his soul.

* * *

“Alright, is that everybody? Scooch in, make room. Duck, hold still now, and—!” The disposable camera clicked. 

Under it, a bright smile parted the unruly beard, brimming with satisfaction: “Aw, that’s great!”

Harry wondered if he looked normal in the picture, if he blended in, if he fit. 

The morning of their family outing was a whirlwind of preparations, rousing sleepy bodies from a half dozen cozy corners, stuttering apologies at the tall and tiny people brushing past him to wash off sleep. His house wasn’t very restful, he knew. Generations of madness and bad blood still steeped silk-lined walls.

That it was his godfather’s house before him and he rarely left it seemed to cause worry, so he didn’t speak on it much and apologized for any restlessness. That Sirius languished here until his own cousin killed him kept the guests up at night. 

Harry wouldn’t have told them Number Twelve’s history unprompted, of course. 

_“What? Did I lie?,” Snape sneered, rucksack over his shoulder again. They were back at the parlor fireplace, the older man sliding out for another night._

_Not once had he slept in Harry’s house, and while the young wizard was glad for it, Snape skipping out always needled him. The man made sure to leave with the last word every time to the point when seeing him meant another thing unsaid, and if he stayed for once, maybe Harry could get it all out._

_Maybe he could feel finished with their last conversation and take the next step toward something new. But before he could punctuate a generous thought, Snape was in the stairwell, pointing out to Grace where the house elf heads were once mounted._

_Oh, what were house elves?, she’d ask._

_Well!, the awful git would relish._

_Maybe if Zed wasn’t so tired these days, he’d have someone to snark with. Maybe then he might be tolerable. But ever since the ward night, it was a rarity to see their half-sister out of bed for longer than it took to take a meal._

Harry rode the wash of white, tasks needing doing, turning to his name being called five, ten, a dozen times. Cooking breakfast, cursing fanged rugs from savaging pant legs, grabbing jackets; shooing a curious child from the attic, vanishing the folding ladder to be safe. He was a toy top spinning, floating on equal tugs from every side, sights blurring, skirting around a fall.

“Hoo, relax!” His mother caught his chin in the foyer and held his dizzy attention. She chuckled, tucking a cowlick behind his ear while he caught his breath. 

“You can tell them to bugger off, y’know? They’ll run you ragged otherwise.”

He nodded, touching the gold bracelet cuffing her wrist, “Yes, ma’am.” 

“Now, if you could run up to my room, I’ve left something in the stand by the door, like the bloody genius I am.” She stepped back and drew a rectangle in the air, roughly a hand’s width and height. “It’s wrapped in an old scarf, a green paisley one.” 

“Right, I’ll just—,” and he hopped to it, eager to help. 

Sure enough, as described, he found a scarf-wrapped bundle in her bedside drawer: emerald and jade paisley printed on synthetic satin. It balded at the corners, but the pattern was still rich, even if laddered by a few pulled threads. It looked sparingly handled as he gripped it across its terse middle and felt paper shush and flatten. Letters, possibly folded into squares.

Stealing a glance around the bedroom, he saw the hesitant sprawl of an unintentionally long stay. The wardrobe stood open, dripping with unhung summer jumpsuits and balled up skirts. Shoes loosely attended the foot of the bed, although some lone slippers wandered as far as the en-suite bathroom. The vanity squatted mostly bare except for an accidental smudge of red on the mirror. Squinting, he saw it was a fingerprint in his mother’s lipstick, half-heartedly wiped and promptly forgotten. 

He left, swallowing guilt. 

They both smiled when he returned, Harry apologetically and Grace with a leaving tightness. That happened sometimes: he’d find her again mid-exorcism. An unspoken pain melted when she saw him, and she never made it his business. So, he never asked after it, positive he understood. 

He passed along the cloth-wrapped bundle. Taking it, she held his emptied palm, squeezed, and let go. Then she promptly plucked him between the eyes.

“Ow!” 

“Next time, tell me to get it myself,” she chastised, beckoning him outside with a finger and a lopsided grin. “You’re family, not the bleedin’ help.”

The others funneled in and out of the kitchen, raiding the pantry for road snacks—snack cakes, crisps—while Grace slid the bundle into her canvas tote. Mid-morning traffic pushed back the clamor indoors in favor of the washed out sidewalk.

“Thank you anyways, lovey,” she said, petting his cheek. She then exchanged it for a stack of letters from Ginny. “The birds brought these today. Tell your little miss I hope all’s well. We’re thinkin’ of her.”

He promised that he would, looking over his shoulder at her parlor perch. Grace had worn a divot into his couch after two weeks of watching the owls come and go. 

_“There’s no telly, so,” she shrugged when asked._

The Hedgerots’ extended stay threw them into a waiting that dragged on like the one before feeling returned to a foot fallen asleep. They braced, ready for pain—eager for anything, really. Grace lingered all day by the parlor windows, eating and watching the street. Zed usually kept to her room; Harry to the kitchen, him and his mother always within each other's sight; and Laney read what Harry left for her in the library. 

If not reading, the girl played with Snape’s cat in the weed-throttled yard. One could catch her mimicking spells she’d seen, twirling a plucked stick over her toad, scratching the cat’s bat-like ears while it curled in her lap. 

And when Freddy wasn’t out meeting with his old London buddies, he was home, visiting them all with a story from the outside world, bringing takeout, nudging Harry into another tour of the house. Stuffy air swirled anew around his huge body stopping room to room, disappearing upstairs only for his booming laughter to break the all-day quiet. Sometimes raspy cackles followed and some shameful weight would lighten. 

Freddy took their waiting one day at a time, it seemed, although he left almost every day to do it. But unlike Snape, he came back to keep peace and settle the many simmering pots after they were meanly stirred, coaxing their spinning spoons to rest. It was quite the trick, this shaking off of spirits.

“Great! Zeds, move in a little more. C’mon, closer! This ain’t a panoramic.”

He was the only one who could ask to see Sirius’s room without Harry feeling on display. He told Grace about it late one night and let her put his head on her shoulder about it. Luckily, she didn’t hold him for too long, just long enough to say her sorries. Then they clicked on to sharing a sleeve of crackers on the couch, mired in comparable quiets.

Harry tried to summon that feeling now for the camera. Singing along, spending time with his godfather in the quietude of his thoughts. The hot, muffling palm on his ear, the house dress sopping up his tears, and the easiness that followed. His return to the kitchen the next morning to start breakfast gave a glimpse of the little witch sprouting out of the strangled hawthorn hedge. 

His hands were clammy. One second ticked past, then two, then again like a corner turned, Freddy’s excited, “Say ‘cheese,’ you beautiful bums!,” and the shutter.

 _Think happy thoughts._ Feeling thirteen again, he tried to summon his happiest memory. He winded up thinking of the mantle at Little Whinging, all those picture frames showing out as if he never existed. 

New memories needed time before they were happy ones. He felt his gathering in their blinding white tendrils, negotiating ice and rock and void. They were still becoming. Making up memories was easier. They were born distant, massive and holding, fully formed from want.

The Dursleys’ cleared their heels over Privet Drive’s hand painted threshold too long ago. Even so, if he thought in it, he could still feel the brush handle bite in splinters. He could still taste the cloying paint fumes. 

There wasn’t a real place in the world Harry could make envy this moment now. Only in his mind could he imagine stepping over that white painted line and placing a new picture frame above that fireplace, something gilded and bejeweled around him and his people. In it, they posed awkwardly on his front walk. Rubies would wink at every corner of the frame and the Hedgerots would crowd together, Harry centered, all of them swimming in the tired t-shirts he kept in hoards. 

He’d been too nervous with the laundry this morning, and sensing weakness, Number Twelve took its prey. Admitting that his washer ate their clothes—Harry winced and hurried to rearrange his face, seeking smooth so as not to ruin the picture. 

“Mum, I’m bored,” Laney complained. Her light voice barely registered in his palm.

He tamped down her hair by her request, since her curls hid her brand new, pink tiger hair clips, and she had wanted them in the picture. She even begged for a picture of just the clips nestled in her hair. Freddy gladly provided.

“Almost done,” Grace promised. “Remember, we’ve got to take twice as many pictures as we lost.” 

“Why _twice_ as many? Why not as many, or we could make a video, even.”

“Hush, baby. Because.”

Thanking his aunt and uncle for Dudley’s twice yearly trips to Disneyland Paris, he clothed his family in t-shirts tucked into their surviving if distressed jeans. Now they matched Zed’s faded Minnie Mouse sweatshirt, featured so heavily thanks to the drafty halls and the way her body could suddenly come over wracked with shivers. It was almost funny to uniform in cartoon characters, the appliqué faces rubbing off from wear, the fabric musty like the drawers he dressed them from.

Right, he could smile at this.

“Okay, one more!,” Freddy called, a hand raised to keep them still while the other’s broad thumb cranked the film dial. 

Plastic quacked while Harry tried not to frown, tried to hear his brother’s instructions over blood pounding in his ears. Deaf, he stretched his cheeks, bared his teeth, and again, the camera clicked.

“Perfect! Last one!” 

Zed, who hadn’t complained yet, sighed irritably and shuffled from her place on Harry’s left. He tensed for the swears she’d surely spit, but none came. Rather, Grace herded her eldest back against Harry’s side, upgrading her close-lipped smile to a pointed beam. His sister slouched closer, resigned to memory-making. 

Relieved, Harry wondered if his smile looked realer now when pressed limply against his teeth. He tried to look memorably cheerful instead of unfortunate and ill-prepared. He kept remembering the laundry. 

Seeking distraction, he glanced down to the hand not in his mother’s, the one resting on the bridge of Laney’s headphones. Black curls like his brushed his fingertips.

_Click!_

“Wait!,” he gasped, but it was swallowed by the group breaking up with a collective groan, cracking stiff joints, stretching necks and shoulders. Everyone gathered their bags and hustled to the gold station wagon parked at the curb. 

Harry stood frozen on the stoop, protest lost in the chorus of “Finally!,” and “For fuck’s sake, Fox!,” and the pert, “So, Severus’ll meet us up by there with Mr. Lupin. Speaking of, Zeddie! You’ll say sorry to that poor man for last time,” and the hoarse, “Like hell I will,” hawked around the filter on a Marlboro Gold.

Freddy folded into the car gripping the wheel, the driver’s seat pushed practically into the trunk to accommodate his long legs. Only Grace could squeeze in behind him with Laney held in her lap, and a cat crate held in the girl’s lap, making a tower of squirming and bothered. Without Remus riding with them, Zed dropped into the passenger’s side, snapping something under her breath, refusing help as she slammed her door shut. 

Thin fingers flicked a cigarette butt onto the street. The she-wolf then curled over hunched, trembling slightly as Harry hefted his duffle to the car. He spared her a worried glance to find her fiddling with the A/C, cranking up the heat. 

He circled around to the free seat. Room was made for him in the back between the bags and the roll-down window. He got in and gave up on which of his expressions the camera kept. He’d know when they developed the picture, he supposed. 

Peeking around the bags at Laney cracking open a textbook and Grace squeezing the cat’s paw poked out the carrier; Freddy bopping his head to every station as he tuned the radio; even Zed settling into her seat, warm air pumping, and glancing back at him, her mouth tilted neutrally as she looked him over in the side view mirror: he couldn’t look _too_ bad. Everyone around him was fine. 

Yes, he felt off, but that was his normal. He vowed to try sleeping this trip. All settled, they pulled off into the busy street.

* * *

“AHH! Oh my _god!”_

Laney’s shrill shriek ripped him from a deep sleep. Harry sputtered, smacking his glasses off in the haste to wipe drool from his chin while beside him, the girl screamed again. Her head jutted from around the bags, headphones flung to the mat, her whole body pitching forward as she dove for the front seat.

“Whasit!?,” he slurred, digging in his pockets for his wand. An attack!? “What’s happen!?”

“Fred, your song! It’s _your song!”_ Harry fell back against the seat, clutching his shirt, heart stuttering back to life. 

_Just the radio? Seriously?_ He fanned himself, broken out in sweat. 

Annoyed, hacking on his dry throat, he started cranking down the window, needing air but the handle stuck. He stuck his face into the crack whipping with burnt rubber, highway air. He managed to haul in a few much needed breaths before she shrieked a third time.

This time the rest of the car joined her. Freddy drummed on the steering wheel, cackling gleefully. 

“Whooo! Yeah!,” he shouted out the window, fist pumping in victory. He started honking at the cars they passed picking up speed, rattling down the asphalt. Quite a few, seeing his grin, honked back and whooped with him. 

They peeled off in the fast lane. Harry watched, losing his foul mood, growing curious as they overtook baffled, smiling, or plainly exhilarated other drivers. 

_He must really like this song,_ Harry thought, rubbing sleep from his eye. Grabbing his glasses from his lap, he tried to tune in.

Zed breathed an awed, “Well, shit. Listen to that,” and cranked up the volume. 

The rock song revved like the station wagon’s unconquerable engine, pulling Harry from his last bit of sleep. It thrummed through him, guitars eating lethargy, sluggishness, and spite as the song, resting on a driving bass, took off in a summoning call to action.

 _“Say it now or say it never! Pitch black can last forever!,”_ it promised. Harry felt a swoop in his chest and laughed, swept up in the jubilee, surprised by the song’s inspiring lyrics over top of its gritty sound. 

“I can’t believe it! Freds, I’m—I’m on the floor, I’m—! I’m so _proud_ of you!” 

Their mother covered her face like she meant to cry, eyes already welling, shining with pride just as she said. She held Laney around the waist to keep the girl from falling as she practically climbed over the middle console to sing along to the radio. Grace joined the singing, even Zed nodded along and shimmied her shoulders, taken by the same high.

 _Wish I knew the words._ He looked around at everyone shouting the lyrics back at the radio. 

He caught on to the chorus in time for the song to end, thinking as the radio hosts discussed the song that the vocals sounded the least bit familiar. Maybe he _had_ heard it before, but then he couldn’t imagine where.

“ _Woof! That’s my cardio for the day, lemme tell ya_ ,” one host puffed, sounding out of breath. “ _Now for everyone just tuning in, that was a local favorite from about two or three years back titled ‘Dressed For My Funeral.’_

 _“You club creeps and street rats from early last year might remember the bassist from Pretty Corpses, the deathly Sandy Spits?_ ”

The other host wolf whistled.

“I wonder how’s Sandy these days?,” Grace hummed.

“Good!,” said Freddy, still glowing happily. “Her kid’s just got into college, actually.”

“Ah, bless.”

“ _Well, what you don’t know is about her underground project, Snakeskin, whose frontman—my little devils tell me—is back on the scene making music! We’ll be playing their hits all afternoon hoping to coax that slippery bastard from his cave, keeping it rolling with one of their classics, ‘When He Sleeps.’”_

A new song started and Freddy, smiling, turned it down to hear Zed talk. Harry couldn’t hear her much over the wind from his window, so he hurried to roll it up. Flyaways and ruffled shirts were righted as the atmosphere settled down again, though with a low level buzz excitement. 

Laney couldn’t take her eyes off the radio knob, tapping out tunes on her knees. Grace hummed, co-signing something said up front as she bent over and picked up the textbook forgotten on the floor. It went in the backpack, no longer needed.

“—been going every night, just to get back in the swing. She’s got this new apartment, east side. It’s a shoebox but really done up, y’know. She’s doing well.”

Zed toasted an imaginary glass, “Good on her. She’s the only one I liked. I’m glad you’re workin’ with her and not that creepy one.”

“Chris is still there,” Freddy chuckled, “but he’s fine now. Goin’ bald really mellowed him out.”

“Hmph. A song on the radio, though. That’s great, Fox, really great.”

Freddy beamed all over again, “Thank you.”

Finally, it clicked. 

“That was _your_ song!?,” Harry gasped. He sat up to catch Freddy’s crinkling eyes in the rear view mirror, stunned. 

His brother nodded and sang, “Yes, it was!,” in a heady singsong, nothing like the belting anthem played a minute before. He listened closely to the next song, riveted. The hosts promised to play the same band all day. 

_What did he call them again, uhh, snake something? Snakeskin!_

And there, the same vocalist told the tale of a drunk man—possibly left at the altar? There was an altar. That he knew. A past Freddy sang through the staticky speakers, rolling from bone deep growls to a carry, mournful and clear. He detailed his devastated man in his liquored stupor, sleeping through the apocalypse in the gutter of burning streets. 

Harry couldn’t believe it. He knew Freddy made music, but hearing it for the first time, he was amazed. The song ended on a low note, bleeding into the next.

“You wrote this one for my birthday!,” Laney clapped, her smile splitting her face. The most unrestrained glee he’d seen on her yet, bright as her brother’s, so bright it lit up the car. 

“Yeah, you just heard it last week, ducky. _‘Young as a new hope,’_ that’s you!”

“Damn straight!,” she chirped, making Zed laugh and the others stutter. 

Harry listened to the song for another while—“All Stars Fall, Some Readily,” the hosts said, speculating on its name. Then he realized what Freddy just said and, panicked, looked back to the rear view mirror. Brown eyes found him and thick brows bunched worriedly.

“She had a birthday last week? I missed it?,” Harry lamented. He looked to Zed in the side view and turned to his mother, stricken. Nobody told him! He would’ve consulted the Potter register if he thought to. It rankled that he didn’t know when anyone of them was born. 

“No, no,” Grace reassured, reaching across to brush his knuckles. “You celebrated with everyone last Saturday, remember?”

“That was her birthday!? God, I would’ve bought her a gift!” 

Harry felt like a goon and gave Laney an apologetic wince. She didn’t even notice the conversation shift, focused and smiling about her song. 

“How old are you now?,” he asked her. She didn’t hear him, so Freddy glanced back and tapped her on her cheek. He fluttered his fingers and pointed to Harry, who asked again, this time to her rapid blink, “How old are you? I didn’t know it was your birthday.”

“Eleven,” she shrugged and, assuming that was all, returned to the radio.

 _Her letter will come soon!_ Harry shook his head, disbelieving. 

Laney started Hogwarts that year—except—he looked at the radio but couldn’t find the date. He knew from Ginny’s letters, though, that it was well into September. It was already the September last time they traveled to Cokeworth, or the cusp of it at least, and yet here sat Laney, in a Disney shirt, waiting for her Muggle school to start. 

“We’re nearly there,” Freddy announced. He twisted in his seat to push Laney back into Grace’s lap, telling her to buckle up. “Sweetie, sit down or you’ll topple over and your brain’ll come shootin’ out your nose.”

“That doesn’t happen,” she protested, sitting as told.

Harry spent the last half hour in silence, biting his tongue, letting the chatter wash over him and watching the cars go by.

* * *

They arrived at Spinner’s End. The lot of them whined as they spilled from the hooptie onto the cobblestone street. Wrinkled from a doze, Grace blearily counted heads while Harry stood to one side, elbow interlocked with hers as it tended to. 

He shifted uncomfortably, sore from hours of sitting, and watched Laney juggle her book, her bright orange backpack, and his Cloud Cleaver as Freddy handed it to her from the trunk. She bounced on the balls of her feet, creasing her hot pink flats to reach up on tiptoes and grab the shiny broom handle. 

He murmured a spell to keep off the soggy grey. The scant few trees besides the ward forest ending the street were already breaking out in autumn yellows. Harry held his wand in his off hand and felt turning cold in the wet air gloving it. He hadn’t felt the seasons this strongly in a while. Within the wards, it was always summer.

His weekend bag of clothes and things for letter writing rested against his leg. He hadn’t used the scraggly quills sock-wrapped inkwell since ripping and running a few weeks before. While he stewed, Hermione’s letters picked up alongside Ginny’s until he saw Ministry owls more than his girlfriend’s.

Even Ron wrote more these days, as if the couple agreed to check in with him more often, like when they were kids. 

He hoped to borrow whatever owl Hermione sent when she inevitably wrote today, knowing she knew that today was the second journey north. He’d had an extra week to plan how to pad his reply—not to distract his friends, per se, but to put them off until they spoke in person. 

_“It must be chafing by now,”_ said Ron’s last letter.

A couple of paragraphs about the excitement finally dying down at the Ministry; asking after everyone’s health; and then he wrote that. He wrote it as plainly as he might say it over a beer:

_“You’re probably used to just you and Ginny, right? You don’t even hang around the Burrow this long anymore, even with most everyone moved out. Don’t get me wrong! I get it! Too much family all at once can be a right pain.”_

_That’s not it,_ Harry wanted to explain.

But he didn’t want to admit to having a problem, especially one he couldn’t quite place. Even now, new revelations on the ride up niggled at him, adding to the mess he felt buzzing between his ears. So instead of trying to put words to feelings just yet, he held still and smothered the itch to find a peaceful nook in the ward-made woods. 

“Yep,” he spoke up when he was counted, staring off into the trees. He could already sense the sun inside.

“Okay, that’s every— _haaah!_ —that’s everyone,” Grace yawned, back of one hand covering her mouth. Laney took the lead and they all trudged into the treeline, following the bobbing broomstick held high to point the way.

* * *

“You have _got_ to admit that the issue lies with your family’s wards.” Severus rolled his eyes, letting the screen door slam behind him. 

Re-affixed after Weasley blew it off its hinges—granted, in the interest of saving them all from a raging inferno—it swung crookedly, as he’d hung it in a rush, and bounced off the frame before squeaking gap-mouthed to the yard.

Red gold sunlight still streamed onto verdant grasses, white clovers tinged orange in the afternoon and dragonflies weaving on iridescent wings through the breeze. Severus looked back at the idyllic sliver, imagining it was a painting he could just glimpse around a corner, housed in a rickety frame—his buckled metal door jamb—that, like the view, could only be what it was made to be. 

Someone might argue for Cokeworth’s inherent beauties. Severus wouldn’t, even if he did know them, finding things too often appreciated grew arrogant and soiled. Or were noticed and interfered with.

As he thought on how his wards tapped into natural beauty like a well did water, drawing it forth and pooling it for others to drink in, Lupin sidled into view. He gagged, disgusted, and moved on to the cabinets, searching the shelves for food. It’d been left fully stocked with canned goods, and picking tinned beans, he looked for bread. 

“I’m serious, Snape,” Lupin pressed. “While you’ve been outside, I’ve tried to study your charts—.”

“I noticed,” he sniffed. He spared a narrowed eye at the papers spread over his kitchen table.

They communed with a vigorous humming that Severus didn’t hear until the werewolf pointed it out. That day passed uneventfully with few gains made until Lupin excused himself, sheet-white except for his pinking fingers. They had looked chewed down to the next layer of skin and quite abruptly after some time spent indoors, the man took the rest of the day off.

When he returned the next evening still in his work robes, all he said was, “You—!,” giving up when Severus simply stared at him, one eyebrow raised, wrists deep in the dirt.

“Are you at least comfortable admitting that this,” Lupin gestured at the fractured ceiling, shedding plaster, “needs more than just superficial fixes? Even if we could lift the house—which we still haven’t managed—the strain would bring it down. And any attempt to reinforce it first just makes the _wards_ stronger.

“Something in your warding—Kingsley is up to asking about it daily, and I’ve had to put him off, but it’s only getting harder when they get more powerful by the day.”

“How tragic. The Minister of Magic is _concerned_ about something. It’s almost as if that’s his job.” Severus checked the fridge.

Non-perishables did fine in the house, meanwhile any frozen greens and meats had already thawed and spoiled. 

“You don’t know what they’re saying at the Ministry. Whatever you’ve done is too new, plus two Aurors disappeared on the same night.” Severus tensed, waiting for the leaden beat, the accusation, but Lupin kept on nagging, clearly only making a point about context while unconcerned about news of missing Aurors. 

He supposed the wolf didn’t marry into caring for law enforcement, excluding his late wife. Severus then supposed that was his right. Aurors went over with werewolves about as well as they did with Death Eaters, if not less so.

He kept rummaging through the fridge. Milk went bad, as did any fruits in the crisper. Ice stayed inexplicably frozen. He examined the test tray he kept in the freezer, his canary in the coal mine beside puddles of vegetal goo. 

Still solid today. He called that a sign, maybe even a good one.

“There’s rumors that Unspeakables have already opened a case. If they’re the ones investigating the Burp, it won’t be long till they’re at your door, assuming there’s still a door when they get here.”

 _What a ridiculous name,_ he thought. The Prophet had taken to calling all of England’s Floo network firing at once “the Purple Burp.” No doubt suggested by the Ministry to quell public terror to befuddlement at best, the implications were quite fearsome.

_But the name..._

“You make sure you’re not followed here?,” he asked instead.

“Of course, I’m not an idiot.” Severus swept out an arm to say, “Well there you are, then.”

“Whether you’re an idiot remains to be seen. If we harken back to the spring of ‘94–.”

“Alright, ‘Mssr. Valdis Ozols.’” Lupin leaned in his doorway with crossed arms, furrowing his furry brow.

Severus sucked his teeth, annoyed every time the werewolf cited his Latvian pseudonym. The first shock of the reveal had faded, but his carelessness stung.

“By the way, your last treatment on yarrow for turn-wounds was _inspired_.” He started a slow, sarcastic clap that made Severus sneer and give him his back.

He slammed the fridge door and returned to banging through the cabinets. Each slam coaxed more plaster down to sprinkle on the lino and crunch underfoot.

“Snape, this might be asking a lot from you, given who you are as a person, but do be reasonable. You need an expert.”

“And like I’ve already told you, I engineered all of this myself with help from a book more than a decade out of print whose author is very dead. When will you get it through your thick skull that _I am_ the expert?,” Severus said back through gritted teeth, slashing open his tin of beans, patience thinning to a wisp almost instantly at hearing Lupin’s chalk-soft urging grow more insistent. 

Like an embolism, the other man leaned and grew and stopped the vital flow of ideas from the miserly universe to Severus’s scavenged mind. He couldn’t _think_ with the wolf _whining_ at him! 

“With all due disrespect,” and at this, Lupin sounded closer, no longer cowering across the kitchen because of a few scribbles left to themselves, “you have no idea what you created. No one does.”

Severus said nothing, blood a high-pitched squeal until he opened a drawer for a spoon, found none, and exploded.

“Why are you even here!?,” he shouted, throwing his opened can to the floor.

Lupin leapt back to avoid being splattered with bean juice, but seemed otherwise unfazed, at best maybe disgruntled.

“You’re worthless to me! Do you know that? Do you!? You just shuffle around my house giving your useless opinions! What do you _want_ here, Lupin!? How are you helping!?”

“I’ve made it my job to help difficult people with impossible situations,” the werewolf answered, cool as a cucumber. He let Severus seeth like he would his toddler and it infuriated him.

“Go away! Leave! You’re not needed!”

“Y—,” but by then Severus remembered his wand. He lifted it to between Lupin’s widening eyes just as the front door swung open.

“ _Fuck off!_ It’s even worse again!? How—Rev!” Zinnia’s shout ricocheted into the kitchen, breaking both wizards out in a cold sweat. 

As she called, the wards on the table rang and the basement door burst open in greeting, loosing a terrible tremor and growl from down below. They had both combed the cellar a dozen times, and Lupin less so after his bad afternoon, neither ever finding a beast to make them as jittery as when they unlocked the basement door. They more than padlocked it lately as the wards swelled. The only thing the pair agreed on was to spell the basement shut. 

That she could just shout it open: the wizards rushed their wands into respective back pockets, turning in unison to the in-pouring of the innocent. The ones already inside froze at feeling the house shake. The rest—Grace, unfortunately Potter, and Fred laden with bags—gasped on the porch.

“What was that!?”

“Is it comin’ down!?”

“Get outside!”

Severus looked on helplessly as Grace pushed her children out the door, throwing back one frazzled, furious look as she spun her youngest around by the broomstick she clung to. The girl staggered backwards, knock-kneed, gaping up at the cracks slithering across the ceiling, racing down paths from highest stress, seemingly escaping the ruin alongside its occupants.

He gathered himself, snatched the drawings from the table and made to follow, only for Lupin’s vice grip to catch his arm and jerk him back.

“Were you going to curse me?,” he hissed furiously. Severus turned from the front, looked down his nose and shook off his hand. He flexed the forearm grabbed, uneasy at its throbbing from Lupin’s aberrant strength. 

The ward drawings buzzed against his wand. Fenrir reared up in a stale draft from underground, halls howling. Severus met the indignant olive green glare in the din and kept powering to the front hall. The back door was closer, but his feet carried him as far from the kitchen, toward the others, as fast as his soles could clap wood. 

Lupin opted for a quicker escape, obviously intending to meet Potter around at the curb. As Severus hurried, dodging a chunk of falling plaster, he heard the werewolf’s shoes shushing in the overgrown weeds outside. The walls were paper now. 

Severus strode into the day and was swiftly yanked from under the shuddering awning. The beams supporting the porch roof snapped in another hug from serpent ecstatic to see its forgers returned home. It couldn’t tell that it was destroying said home as it welcomed them.

“What’s happened, Severus? You never said…” He split his attention between the front windows shattering inwards and Grace whispering in horror by his side, unhanding his sleeve. “You said you needed another week, not…”

There—the guilty pang. 

“The house is older than it looks, and it already _looked_ silver-haired. It was practically collecting benefits,” he reasoned aloud. The humid air hardly let his voice carry over the forlorn swears, panting, and incredulous head-shaking as Spinner’s End wailed. 

The house canted to one side. Lupin was right in that it rather undeniably tilted to the left. 

White gold light whipped out in ropes to oppose the house’s fall, forcing it somewhat upright and lashing it to the ground. The spell thrummed, fighting the drag and the weight of the house, waif though it was. 

Lupin appeared from around the side as Severus predicted, with an unexpected and furious focus, conducting with his wand, spinning more white gold into existence to stake the house down like a tent. He shot a loaded look Severus’s way but kept working silently while the wizard sweat on the curb in the boggy heat. 

Severus scanned those crowding around him to watch Lupin work, his eyes landing again on a welcome face in the bunch. Zinnia glanced his way, looking unimpressed to see magic abound, although telling from how she massaged her frown, glad to see it finally do some good. She nodded at him, waved. Her fingers shook and he pointed mockingly.

“Afraid?,” he said in a quirked brow, a slanted frown, as if he wasn’t standing there himself confronting the unknowable depths of their predicament.

“I can’t help it, dickhead,” she pantomimed—a succinct dance of shrugging and flipping him off. Even that finger trembled. How quickly he’d forgotten about the wards’ other tolls. 

Then her expression opened, frown a dew from irritation to a quieter, readier thing awaiting tragedy. 

“The house?,” she mouthed. Severus gripped his papers tighter. They hummed. Their strange magic echoing up his wrist bones. His fingers went numb.

* * *

They agreed to an early evening picnic in the yard. Remus said his hello to Harry, although he neglected to stay despite the younger man wishing he would. He desperately wanted the older man’s insights. His friend seemed distracted, though, and too sharp when skirting around Zed that even she watched him go, bemused. Harry sighed as Remus popped away, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

 _Nope,_ he soundly refused, seeking Laney out for her flying lessons. He’d rather teach something he knew like breathing than puzzle at itchy, shapeless nothing.

“No higher than the roof.”

He held the Cleaver steady so Laney could climb on. She found her seating, floating no more than three feet off the ground. Then she looked back at the house and adjusted her glasses, pausing.

“Only that’s not as easy as last time, to be honest,” she opined. He took in the wobbly roof and conceded the point. One corner of it rose a full foot above the other in a stiff wind.

“No higher than this, then.” Harry aimed his wand to draw a height marker like for a Quidditch practice. 

“Uh, less of that!” He turned to his mother, sat up disapprovingly on her shawl, wagging a finger at them. “The flying is fine. She can do the flying, but none of that wand waving, please! I’ve had about enough of _that_ today, thank you very much.”

“Er,” he looked at his wand, his trusty phoenix feather and holly, “Okay?”

Tucking it in his back pocket felt off, like tying his hand behind his back. 

Uneasiness kicked again as Grace laid back on her elbows, watching them from behind mirrored sunglasses and twiddling her fingers to move them on. He wanted to shrug and ask what she expected him to do whilst unarmed. Instead, he turned back to Laney measuring the length of the broom’s waxed handle with her thumbs. She looked up when she finished counting in her head, hazel eyes keen behind her glasses.

“No higher than the trees, I guess,” he corrected. She nodded and threw her head back, taking flight. 

“Christ!” Freddy got to his feet, fist to his chest, bug-eyed as she floated higher and higher toward the canopy. 

This wasn’t the first time he’d seen her on a broom, since Harry taught her some in the backyard at Number Twelve as promised. Harry realized, though, as the rest of the family—save Snape—scrambled to watch, that this might’ve been the first time they’d seen Laney fly on her own. Usually Harry rode along as an emergency stop, but knew even from watching that she didn’t need it. 

_She’s really a natural,_ he thought proudly, watching her dart and turn a bit like the dragonflies. She held her chin up to the wind bathing her face, and something in him eased. He knew that feeling was better than anything. 

“Oh, joy,” drawled Snape. He sat cross-legged against a sapling, scribbling in a leather-bound notebook. “Another Potter jock. Blessed be.”

“You can do that?,” Freddy asked shakily. “That’s safe, yeah? She’s little, so she’s not gonna get blown away?”

“She’ll be doing this next year in her first official flying lesson, anyway. That’s supervised by a professional and, loathe as I am to admit it, Potter isn’t the worst to teach her now. Besides, she’d be far from the first student to arrive with fly time under her belt.

“Technically, when she’s older, she wouldn’t even need the broom.”

“What does _that_ look like?,” Zed snorted. Harry recalled the bat-like shape flying over Hogwarts’ walls and shivered. 

“So, you all start schooling when you’re twelve?,” Freddy followed. Although he kept his eyes on Laney’s lazy loops, he eased back down to sit on his jacket, one leg out, the other bent to support his arm crooked on his knee.

“Hm, eleven,” Snape replied distractedly, jotting a new thought down and rereading it. “September first of their eleventh year. Very exciting time, even for me as a child.”

“Well shit, sucks I missed it,” Freddy huffed, not sounding too bothered despite his words. 

Grace didn’t respond. Harry doubted she even heard them talking. She just stood, her head craned back until the swallow on her neck stretched over her collar; arms crossed, feet apart, body rigid. Her shades flashed, reflecting the orange sky and Laney’s small, dark silhouette. She braced for some unknown thing, looking ready to fight on this gentle summer day, and Harry watched, his heart pounding. It knocked against his ribs, pumping, pumping, as he watched his mother follow the broom with her head, her eyes hidden.

 _The bundle._ The thought came to him like a picture taken ten, eleven years ago. 

Perhaps all the talk of first years at Hogwarts, or the edge from tucking his wand away, or from Laney flying to be so obviously joyful and yet balked at—feared. Whatever it was, it brought back memories of cupboards, dish soap, the first dark shadow in the Forbidden Forest, the first slither in the walls. It brought back danger. 

Gooseflesh raised all along his arms.

“Harry, sweets, can you get me a couple aspirins from my purse? I’ve headache, somethin’ awful.” 

“Erm, sure.” His heart wouldn’t calm. He gave up his spot watching Laney, passed his mother who smiled warmly at him and pat his cheek. 

“Thank you, really. There should be a sachet in the side pocket. Don’t bother with water, just that and I’m golden.” He nodded, mouth filling with spit like he meant to vomit from the sudden plaguing nerves. 

“Jesus, take one for yourself while you’re in there. You look done in. Are you alright?”

“Y-yeah!” 

He swallowed the rock lodged in this throat and felt it sink his thudding heart into his stomach. Harry walked away, floating higher than the trees when he stepped onto Grace’s red linen shawl spread out under an oak. He reached into the grey leather purse squatting right on its edge, forgetting what he meant to fetch—aspirins, right—but only seeing the green scarf, knotted so loosely.

It was too easy to work a finger in the knot and twist, undoing the bundle. Paper, just paper relaxed into the confines of the purse, addressed in ink the color of the scarf, the same water grey as the purse, as his hands, as the grass and the shawl stretched over it.

 _“Dear Ms. Hedgerot,”_ it read, _“We are pleased to inform you—.”_

His ears rang. Somewhere overhead Laney might’ve whooped in joy and he wouldn’t know it. 

_“Headmistress: Minerva McGonagall.”_

Who was the deputy now? He looked at Snape who, sensing distress like sharks did wounded fish, found him on his knees sick, sick to screaming yet breathless. How many letters were there? They were right in front of him but he didn’t know. He couldn’t count them. 

The stack was small. Some were so old, they had yellowed, but kept crisp edges, hardly ever read. Harry had handled his acceptance letter so often, it became brittle and brown and velvet soft. If he touched it now, it’d fall apart.

“—tter? Potter!” He returned to focus, mind reeling, Snape somehow unnoticed as he stalked through the forest shadow to stand over him. He wrinkled his nose at Harry, who remembered the rummaged purse between his knees and shook his head and shook the letter and just shook. 

“Snooping. Missed your old tricks, boy?”

He swiped the letter from his hand and scanned the first line, then paused. Then looked up: at Grace probably, a few yards off; then higher to Laney, then down to where Harry trembled.

“Why would she do this?,” he hissed, gut churning.

Snape’s face folded into a look so resigned that for the first time, Harry saw him and remembered his mother, Lily. Something in the giving over to pain looked like grieving. 

It was a cold shock to see Snape care. He handed the acceptance letter back and snapped at Harry to put all as he’d found it.

“I’ll return with you all tonight,” he warned. That look, too weighty, too ominous, drawing from too much more to learn. “She’ll have to explain and you’ll have to listen.”

“But Laney—!”

“I know,” and that was all he left him with. Snape twirled his wand and the aspirin levitated from the purse into his open palm. He stalked back through the hedges to deliver it to Grace himself.

Harry listened to swishing grass, her confused huff, her thanking Snape nonetheless and his answering sniff. 

When he finally summoned the courage to look at her again, she was sitting, head tilted back, still watching Laney play. Vigilant, she wiggled her feet, humming the melody to Freddy’s song but with tight shoulders. He looked long, probably too long, and saw her grip the grass. Even sitting, she held on like the earth would drop from under her if she ever let it go.

**Author's Note:**

> [”Dressed For My Funeral” is inspired by Dio’s “Scream,” from Killing the Dragon](https://open.spotify.com/track/2sq5fSfjqdw7SBDp87kuw9?si=M-hQdAZPQFiYY-GNMlqjiQ)


End file.
